Well, dear readers, the comic business has been buzzing through my bookbabebrain ever since returning from the grand Heroes Convention in Charlotte, NC.
What can all those swell, cool, passionate comic book fans and creators teach us in the book biz who struggle against the structures of Byzantine book publishing? I will be posting a few of my thoughts (as they were) over the next week.
FANS VS. READERS
Comic book conventions are not about librarians, educators, retailers or publishers (as they are in the book biz). Comic book conventions are about and for FANS. Fans? Who are fans?
Fans are readers. Fans are readers that follow writers and artists through their entire body of work down to each minute publication. Fans may have questions about character origins, future stories, may line up to watch you draw, may pay $100 for you to draw something for them, and may even DRESS UP like your character. Fans want to be “in” on a new storyline or publication. They want to know about something before anyone else.
Book readers do not behave quite in this way. Do they not have the attention span from book to book? Is the book publishing world at fault for being too slow? Are we writers too slow? What can be done to speed up our process and is there a role for more serialization in children’s literature?
Should more events welcome legions of book readers as fans? And how DO we get them to dress up??
I will be exploring this all the marketing of my client’s work. Other folks can look to the history of the book, Diary of a Wimpy Kid for clues.
